A youth among the foolish youths I spy'd,
Who took not sacred Wisdom for his guide.

Just as the sun withdrew his cooler light,
And evening soft led on the shades of night,
He stole in covert twilight to his fate,
And pass’d the corner near the harlot's gate:
When lo, a woman comes!-
Loose her attire, and such ber glaring dress
As aptly did the harlot's mind express;
Subtile she is, and practis'd in the arts,
By which the wanton conquer heedless hearts:
Stubborn and loud she is, she hates her home,
Varying her place and form, she loves to roam;
Now she's within, now in the street does stray,
Now at each corner stands, and waits her prey.
The youth she seiz'd; and laying now aside
All modesty, the female's justest pride,
She said, with an embrace, Here at my house
Peace-offprings are, this day I paid my vows;
I therefore came abroad to meet my dear,
And lo, in happy hour, I find thee here.

My chamber I've adorn'd, and o'er my bed
Are cov'rings of the richest tap’stry spread,
With linen it is deck'd, from Egypt brought,
And carvings by the curious artists wrought
It wants no glad perfume Arabia yields,
In all her citron groves and spicy fields:
Here all her store of richest odours meets;
I'll lay thee in a wilderness of sweets.
Whatever to the sense can grateful be
I have collected there I want but thee.
My husband's gone a journey far away,
Much gold he took abroad, and long will stay;
He nam'd for his return a distant day.

Upon her tongue did such smooth mischief dwell,
And from her lips such welcome flattry fell,
Th' unguarded youth, in silken fetters tyd,
Resign'd his reason, and with ease comply'd.
Thus does the ox to his own slaughter go,
And thus is senseless of th’ impending blow.

Thus Alies the simple bird into the snare
That skilful fowlers for his life prepare.
But let my sons attend.- Attend may they
Whom youthful vigour may to sin betray;
Let them false charmers fly, and guard their hearts
Against the wily wanton's pleasing arts;
With care direct their steps, nor turn astray
To tread the paths of her deceitful way;
Lest they too late of her fell power complain,
And fall where many mightier have been slain.

T.

STEELE.

No. 411. SATURDAY, JUNE 21.

PAPER I.

OR THE PLEASURES OF THE IMAGINATION.

CONTENTS.

The perfection of our sight above our other senses. The largest variety of ideas, converses with its objects at the greatest distance, and continues the longest in action without being tired or satiated with its proper enjoyments. The sense of feeling can indeed give us a notion of extension, shape, and all other ideas that enter at the eye except colours: but at the same time, it is

very much straitened and confined in its operations, to the number, bulk, and distance of its particular objects. Our sight seems designed to supply all these defects, and may be considered as a more delicate and diffusive kind of touch, that spreads itself over an infinite multitude of bodies, comprehends the largest figures, and brings into our reach some of the most remote parts of the universe.

It is this sense which furnishes the imagination with its ideas; so that, by the pleasures of the imagination or fancy, (which I shall use promiscuously,) I here mean such as arise from visible objects, either when we have them actually in our view, or when we call up their ideas into our minds by paintings, statues, descriptions, or any

the like occasions. We can not indeed have a single image in the faney that did not make its first entrance through the sight; but we have the power of retaining, altering, and compounding those images, which we have once received, into all the varieties of picture and vision that are most agreeable to the imagination; for by this faculty a man in a dungeon is capable of entertaining himself with scenes and landscapes more beautiful than any that can be found in the whole compass

of nature. There are few words in the English language which are employed in a more loose and uncircumscribed sense than those of the fancy and the imagination. I therefore thought it necessary to fix and determine the notion of these two words, as I intend to make use of them in the thread of my following speculations, that the reader may conceive rightly what is the subject which I proceed

upon. I must therefore desire him to remember, that, by the pleasures of the imagination, I mean only such pleasures as arise originally from sight, and that I divide these pleasures into two kinds: my design being first of all to discourse of those primary pleasures of the imagination which entirely proceed from such objects as are before our eyes; and, in the next place, to speak of those secondary pleasures of the imagination which flow from the ideas of visible objects, when the objects are not actually before the eye, but are called up into our memories, or formed into agreeable visions of things that are either absent or fictitious.

The pleasures of the imagination, taken in the full extent, are not so gross as those of sense, nor so refined as those of the understanding. The last are indeed more preferable, because they are founded on some new knowledge or improvement in the mind of man; yet it must be confessed that those of the imagination are as great and as transporting as the other. A beautiful prospect delights the soul as much as a demonstration; and a description in Homer has charmed more readers than a chapter in Aristotle. Besides, the pleasures of the imagination have this advantage above those of the understanding, that they are Inore obvious, and more easy to be acquired: it

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is but opening the eye, and the scene enters: the colours paint themselves on the fancy, with very little attention of thought or application of mind in the beholder. We are struck, we know not how, with the symmetry of any thing we see, and immediately assent to the beauty of an object, without inquiring into the particular causes and occasions of it.

A man of a polite imagination is let into a great many pleasures that the vulgar are not capable of receiving. He can converse with a picture, and find an agreeable companion in a statue. He meets with a secret refreshment in a description, and often feels a greater satisfaction in the prospect of fields and meadows than another does in the possession. It gives him, indeed, a kind of property in every thing he sees, and makes the most rude uncultivated parts of nature administer to his pleasures: so that he looks upon the world, as it were, in another light, and discovers in it a multitude of charms that conceal themselves from the generality of mankind.

There are, indeed, but very few who know how to be idle and innocent, or have a relish of any pleasures that are not criminal, every diversion they take is at the expense of some one virtue or another, and their very first step out of business is into vice or folly. A man should endeavour, therefore, to make the sphere of his innocent pleasures as wide as possible, that he may retire into them with safety, and find in them such a satisfaction as a wise man would not blush to take. Of this nature are those of the imagination which do not require such a bent of thought as is nenessary to our more serious employments, nor at

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